Dreams

**Darkbrady** · 10-01-2009, 06:58 PM

This's one thas always been interestin' to me. I have numerous serious sleepin' problems and a tendency for disturbin', recurrin' dreams, so goin' to sleep is an issue for me and tends to affect my day pretty heavily when I wake up.

What do they mean to you?

If we go into the whole psyche and psychobabble of dreams, they talk about how [x] thing means [y]. Certain things I don't think I'll ever know how they come up w/...a woman bein' chased by a horse is supposed to imply their fear of sexual intercourse...if you're bitten by a spider it's meant to suggest confrontational problems w/ your mother.
They seem..confusin' and random.
But then others do make more sense. Dreamin' of jumpin' off a buildin' is interpreted as you takin' desperate measures to escape somethin'.

Gettin' your dreams analysed and keepin' dream journals and such can help a lot of people; the Freudian aspect of it shows that it's their subconscious tryin' to send messages to you, or that you're seein' them clearly in your unconscious state. This tends to appease some folk as they feel they can learn from it, or put the dreams to good use.
But then, we don't remember all our dreams...in fact we remember very, very few of them. What are we missin'?

If you look at it through the eyes of a scientist, they cannae fully explain it. We don't even have a clear definition of the word; currently it's hoverin' around bein' in REM sleep.
There's little to no real explanation as to what dreams are and why we have them, or specifically a certain dream, at that. There are numerous different scientific ideas and suggestions as to what they are and what causes them. Some see them as your brain takin' the chance to clean itself up, like a computer hard drive defragmentin'.
Others see dreams as interpretations of your long-term memory drive displayin' visually but w/o the reality check that consciousness brings.
They even use dreams to as a theory explain the phenomenon Deja Vu, sayin' that forgotten dreams lie dormant in your mind until you see/do somethin' that strikes up a memory and quickly recalls it to your conscious state; feelin' like a memory of somethin' that never happened...but they say that you dreamt it and simply never remembered.

The occult look at dreams in a similar aspect to the Freudian idea; important, meaningful visions that can predict the future or let you see into the heads and minds of others, or into past lives. You could hear that the future will be envisioned through a dream and have that exact situation play out later.
Scientists will argue that your brain simply remembers the more correct ones and forgets the ones that were innacurate, makin' multiple different dreams fade into the distance in favour of the most accurate.
One could counter-argue that a mere dream would not be able to predict the future regardless.

Sayin' all that, there are different types of dreams. Lucid dreams, where you are in complete control, absent-minded dreams where you feel like a viewer and not a doer, incorporated dreams where stimuli from the wakin' world creates the environment, or characters therein, that you dream about.
The sheer number of different types and ways you can dream make it seem like some neurological mess that meets no single explanation....but then you look at the consistancies...

In a single, uninterupted sleep, you're likely to dream roughly five times. Each dream tends to last no longer than half an hour.
You dream more closer to your "deep sleep" phase when your brain is at, or nearest it's most slowdown.
It's almost impossible to remember dreams that occur when your brain is at it's slowest, but as they meet the faster stages of your sleep (not long after fallin' asleep, and not long before wakin' up) it becomes easier to remember them. They follow a pattern based on the speed of your brain. Do they also differ based on this?
It's harder to remeber dreams jus' after wakin' up and they'll tend to fade away quicker, but if you're woken up by outside stimulus it's much easier to recall them; why?
People who have sleep deficiency will usually be more likely to remember their dreams than those who can sleep a full night w/o wakin' up.

Considerin' the number of changes, differences and variations alongside extremely routine patterns and structures it makes it even harder to pinpoint exactly what dreams are, what they do and what they cause. Due to this, it tends to come down pretty heavily to personal opinion.

What do dreams mean to you?

**trogdor1316** · 10-01-2009, 07:04 PM

Mmmm...I'll definitely look into this thread, I've been having some weird-as-hell dreams lately. I'll post something tomorrow once I get some time to...sleep on it.

**Blanket** · 10-01-2009, 08:03 PM

Originally Posted by Darkbrady

What do dreams mean to you?

I'm not sure what dreams mean to me, but I know they affect me when I'm awake. I've had one dream where I've woken up with horrible, horrible fear. Real fear. I was literally gasping for breath because of it. That dream caused me to be jumpy and depressed that day even though I couldn't remember what it was about.

When I'm lying in bed trying to fall asleep I'll think about things that I would like to dream about. I usually end up dreaming about something completely different.

I don't try to analyze my dreams, it would probably drive me crazy trying to make sense of most of them. Some are very obvious but mostly they're very random.

**Darkbrady** · 10-01-2009, 08:07 PM

Originally Posted by Blanket

I'm not sure what dreams mean to me, but I know they affect me when I'm awake. I've had one dream where I've woken up with horrible, horrible fear. Real fear. I was literally gasping for breath because of it. That dream caused me to be jumpy and depressed that day even though I couldn't remember what it was about.

Thas exactly why I find them so interestin'. They go beyond jus' a mystery in explanations; they have effects that we're unable to even fathom.
When people say you woke up on the wrong side of the bed, it's because that person has been in a bad mood the whole day w/o any due cause; it's also typically becasue they had a dream the depressed/angered them but completely forgot about it, even though their brain continued experiencin' such emotions and even brought them into the conscious mind.

**Tricky Boy** · 10-01-2009, 08:12 PM

I never dream... ever... or at least I don't remember in when I get up...

**Darkbrady** · 10-01-2009, 08:45 PM

As your brain slows down into the deeper phases of sleep you tend to lose more control; lucid dreams will generall be shaped more around the light sleep (and also more easly influenced by the outside world).
You forget your deep dreams is because when your brain start speedin' up slowly and goin' into different phases of sleep, different dreams and switchin' to a more conscious state of mind; tryin' to remember through all of that is nigh impossible.
But as you say; an alarm clock or someone slappin' you awake will skip all the hassle of your brain havin' to slowly speed up and change; you'll retain a memory of thr dream...but not for long.

This is also why folk are usually pretty slow on mark or grumpy in the mornin's...they're brain is quite literally not functionin' at full capacity yet; especially if they got woken up unnaturally.

Originally Posted by Tricky Boy

I never dream... ever... or at least I don't remember in when I get up...

You dream about five times a night; you jus' don't remeber.
Do you tend to get pretty uninterupted sleeps and a decent full night of sleep, then?

**Tricky Boy** · 10-01-2009, 09:08 PM

Originally Posted by Darkbrady

You dream about five times a night; you jus' don't remeber.
Do you tend to get pretty uninterupted sleeps and a decent full night of sleep, then?

Most nights yeah, I just drop off and don't wake up for hours. It takes me ages to get to sleep but when I fall asleep I'm just dead to the world

**gottibabe1** · 10-01-2009, 08:24 PM

Actually everyone dreams, and i had a professor tell me once that, if u wake up when your in "deep sleep" that's what your really dreaming about, when your in a lighter sleep, you as a person have control over manipulating the light sleep dream. As for the deep sleep dream, that's all your unconsciousness and cant be manipulated. He actually told us if you really want to know what you dream about at night to set an alarm about 1-3 hours after falling asleep after waking up to quickly jot down what the dream was about. He said to do this for about a week to 2 and see if you have any common theme in your dreams. I haven't actually tried this, but i really want to. Also if you sleep with the TV on, your light sleep dreams (the ones people tend to remember, right before they wake up) can be manipulated by what is actually on TV, your brain hears whats on the TV and kind of associates whats on TV with what your dreaming. I can personally say this is true, When I sleep with the TV on, my dreams tend to be similar to whatever is on.